ATLANTA — A voting rights advocate and longtime city commissioner in Coffee County suffered a loss this week in a federal lawsuit she was pursuing against election officials after she was arrested for helping voters during the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Olivia Coley-Pearson is suing the county election board and former election supervisor Emily Misty Martin.
Coley-Pearson was an elected commissioner for the city of Douglas in Coffee County when a city policeman arrested her at a polling site during early voting in 2020.
Martin had called police on Coley-Pearson, complaining she was causing a disruption while helping voters.
Police issued a criminal trespass warning, but Coley-Pearson returned later that day and was arrested.
Coley-Pearson had a long history of helping illiterate voters cast their ballots. After the criminal case against her was dismissed in 2022, she sued Martin and the Coffee County Board of Elections, alleging violation of her constitutional rights to free speech and against false arrest.
A federal judge in Atlanta ruled against Coley-Pearson in 2023, so she appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against her Tuesday.
Martin had asked police to keep Coley-Pearson away, but the appeals court reasoned that the responding city police sergeant, not Martin, was responsible for the arrest.
“He saw with his own eyes that Coley-Pearson was violating that trespass warning, which led to her arrest,” the court opinion says. “And he testified, without record evidence showing otherwise, that both the language in the criminal trespass warning and Coley-Pearson’s arrest rested ‘entirely’ with him.”
The Southern Center for Human Rights reported in March that it helped Coley-Pearson with her legal battles, including her successful defense in two criminal cases brought against her for helping voters in 2016.
The organization reported that the city of Douglas, which Coley-Pearson also sued in connection with her 2020 arrest, had settled with her.
Coley-Pearson has since retired from the city commission, and Martin is no longer overseeing elections.
In 2022, the news outlet ProPublica reported that Martin resigned from her election post under pressure in 2021.
The report said Martin, who also used the surnames Hampton and Hayes, had allowed several computer experts into her offices, where they may have had access to election systems — and that they were connected with Trump’s effort to challenge his 2020 loss to Biden.
Misty Hampton was among the 19 co-defendants, including Trump, whom Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged with racketeering in connection with an alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Willis from prosecuting the case due to an appearance of impropriety involving a romantic relationship with a prosecutor she hired for it. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to consider her appeal of that decision in September, effectively removing her from the case.
The Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia must now find a special prosecutor to handle it.